Pipeline politics is the new Great Game

‘We’re always told that Russia is using its economic resources to achieve foreign policy aims,’ President Putin told journalists recently. But, he went on, it is ‘ill-wishers’ in the Western press who paint Russia as a threat to European energy security. ‘That is not the case.’

Yet within minutes of this assurance, Putin issued a bald threat to one of the EU’s newest members that was a textbook example of how Russia has bullied its way to energy dominance. If Bulgaria did not accept Russia’s terms for the planned pipeline from its Black Sea port of Bourgas to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, Putin warned, it risked losing decades of revenues from shipping supplies of Russian oil. A week later, Bulgaria dropped its objections to Russia’s terms and signed a preliminary deal.

Europe’s fear of the energy superpower to its east began in earnest when Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine at the start of 2006.